Pfff, at least the ass-raping of my youth will be done. I thought not being Catholic I had escaped being raped up the ass in my youth... but not to worry, my youth has now been thoroughly raped. Both Star * series have now been raped completely and thoroughly. George Lucas and his PCness, Star Trek The Office and all the following series, Episode 1-3, followed by the rape of the memory of Star Trek TOS and now even the sequels to Star Wars...
All I can say, well played universe! There is now nothing left to rape. The only thing to finish it off is to make me choke on my own bile as I write this [CARRIER LOST]
So... customers care more about price then minor feature differences but are willing to pay a premium for Apple products that have minor feature differences...
That makes sense.
Oh and smartphones are hardly a budget market at the moment, if you want a budget phone, you get one for 50 dollars or less without a contract. 500-600 dollars for a smartphone is high-end. And they sell like hotcakes.
I am seriously starting to dislike Android. When it runs, it is fine BUT if you want to upgrade (coming from a DOS, Unix, Linux and Windows background) FORGET about it. It is gigantic fucking mess where you are totally at the mercy of the manufacturer as to whether your model gets an upgrade. Cyanogenmod isn't an answer either, it is FAR from a generic Android that just "works". If Android was Linux you would have distro's that ONLY ran on ONE model of Dell and then had 1 year after release small niggling bugs like the monitor not yet working...
Now I grew up with Unix, Dos, Windows and Linux. I am no stranger to having to hunt for drivers and have to deal with weird configurations and installing stuff in just the right order. But with ALL the above, you at least have the OPTION to do so.
With Android? No drivers, no configs, no nothing. Either you spend ages learning how to cook a release to tweak it or you just don't. The debug options to are shockingly bad even compared to Windows. It would be a LOT better if there was just a default install you could do and install drivers that Google required each company to make available for install if they want to use Android.
But they didn't and you suddenly realize just how fucking open the Windows platform is by comparison, just how complete Linux is.
I am either going to stick with Nexus devices in the future or hope an alternative emerges because I am NOT going to be stuck with a device that is not going to be updated by Samsung ever again.
You don't have to differentiate with screen/case etc. JUST FUCKING UPDATE YOUR FUCKING DEVICE! That will make you fucking unique in Android land. The first company that manages to release a device that can ALWAYS run the latest Android version will leave ALL the other companies in the dust.
I played Lord of the Rings Online the most and was a casual raid leader (meaning I organized and ran raids for casual players where often the loot would go to someone who had a birthday or fought well or been really unlucky rather then loot tables, I also didn't care about levels or experience). They were somewhat popular and I was asked to lead other groups... and then found out that in the NON-PUG groups, getting people to talk was a LOT easier. In the PUG raids everyone had sound on but for some reason few had a microphone. Suddenly in the closed raids, most had. And high voices.
Turns out I had been gaming with a lot of women. And I mean a LOT. Some were raids were majority female but when I asked them to join a pug something became clear... they were willing to play BUT could I not reveal they were female.
I have had several discussions online and in the real world were I was told about the kind of abuse female players receive. And this is NOT the rage kind when someone just says "bitch" or the sexual innuendo. Women talk like that too. It were attacks that yes as the AC says, you would expect in Klan meeting. One type of attack is that women have no right to play the game... I mean seriously. WTF?
AND it is not just trolling, there are a lot of REAL misogynists online. They can't vent their putrid bile in real life because they would get beaten up but online they let go.
So... the women hide online and only reveal their gender if they feel safe. AND THAT IS NOT OKAY! If you think it is, then I hate your fucking guts and hope you die before spreading your diseased genes. Because THIS attitude is what fuels extremists by tolerating them. It is basically nothing else then "if you don't want to be raped, don't reveal your gender". It is YOUR kind that created the burkha.
People should be free to be who they are. Yes, there can be gentle ribbing like Q.I. makes fun of homosexuals and hetero's alike BUT that is NOT what gay and female gamers are talking about. Gay and female gamers don't want special regonizition, they simply want to be able to be who they are without getting attacked simply for speaking with a high voice.
And only a closet bigot would start an argument over whether they got the right to be who they are.
Never take security advice from a guy who can't read. The static content web servers use 1024 bit keys, the encryption servers 2048. So you can spend a small fortune decrypting the content on static content web servers. Wheee!
Under EU law at least AT&T would be in trouble for violating privacy laws, they didn't protect private customer data and that is a violation.
So what was the reason this guy who went to a reporter (not just published the list or sold it) prosecuted? And why is there no link of said reporter defending his source?
This case could not have happened in say my own country. There have been cases were it was TRIED but the judges slapped it down hard. So... what part is missing from the story (we are reading just one side of it) or is the US really that different? I can't imagine the US has no privacy laws at all that AT&T would not have violated by making data so easely available. Can't someone bring a case against AT&T? Making this guy evidence in a far great case, possibly worth some outrageous sum in a settlement and worthy as a bargaining chip to get this case dropped?
What is missing from this story? Because on its own it seems to make no sense. Why should AT&T risk bad publicity when a simple "don't do that again" would have buried the story years ago.
You won't get a politician to admit it but everybody knows the US is a major supporter of terrorism and also easily one of the great human rights violators and has been for a long time. Anything from the mass slaughter of natives to agent orange to supporting murderous dictorial regimes to the support of the taliban in Afghanistan when the Russians were there.
As for backing Pakistan, only a complete fool would do that, or a country totally paranoid over communism making it fight the largest democracy in the world by supporting one of the most primitive backward nations on earth. (Hint for fox viewers, India is a democracy, Pakistan isn't).
The US has a long continuing history of being not just a moral vacuum but actually on the side of evil, supporting the nazi regime (to the point that when volunteer American aircrew were bombing ball bearing plants at great personal cost, a shipment of ball bearings went from the US through Sweden that totally off-set the destroyed production), sheltering Nazi war criminals even those guilty of killing US soldiers who had been captured (employed at NASA).
Only the most foolish uncultured people are going to be shocked by the claim that the US is funding terrorism, it is a simple fact that has been proven countless times beyond a shadow of a doubt.
HOWEVER: If I give you a gun to commit a murder, I am guilty. But you DO have free choice, you don't HAVE to do the murder, not even if I give you a million dollars. Yes, the person who hires the assassin is just as guilty AS the assassin but that doesn't absolve the assassin of blame.
The US has found many a willing regime/group in its fight against democracy in the world (remember, India is leaning close to communism then capatalism but freely elected IN a working democracy), it makes it an evil nation, or at least a nation of "wir haben es nicht gewust" (because we made sure not to look) lead by few very evil advisors like Kissinger a man who history would do well to remember in the same line as an Eichman. But it does not stop Pakistan from being an nation of evil itself. It is a nation that has been at war with India since its creation and has been linked countless time to terrorism. India isn't similarly linked in retaliation. The only reason it exists is because the US keeps supporting it else it would long since have collapsed into a non-state like Afghanistan. Just tribal lords fighting each other.
There are a lot of people who hate the US and there are a lot of reasons to hate the US but to many people use that as an excuse to excuse everything anyone else does. There is room for more blame in this world.
He wasn't sentenced (or even found guilty yet) and the claim wasn't for 50 years. But hey, facts happen to other people right?
The moment you start spouting nonsense like this, the rest of your opinion is automatically suspect as well. After all, if you don't know the facts, how can you form an accurate opinion?
Cases like this get very emotional but if you ever want to change anything, you need to argue with facts, not with made up stuff. Liars like mangu just make it easier for people on the other side to dismiss the opposition as being ill-informed morons whose rants have no value.
And with the 11th bride walks up to the altar, you got to wonder just how stupid she really is. Many a MS apologists is really just suffering from battered wife syndrome "nobody understands him, he will chance, he told me!".
Sad. Although I find it a useful measurement to see if a person is worth taking notice off.
For instance "Sponge Bath" and "DavidClarkeHR" can be filed under the heading, to stupid to live. It ain't a nice thing to do but god does it save time and I rather be filed under nasty then stupid.
Dogs are more vicious then humans, but we humans completely dominate dogs. Cats are vicious bastards but the number of incidents of cats killing people are remarkably low (because cats are very good at hiding evidence no doubt).
Viciousness is NOT a survival trait unlike what a LOT of people believe. Darwin shocked people NOT by telling them they were descended from monkeys but by telling them nature was nasty and so were monkeys. BUT more recent research among monkeys has filmed evidence that for instance a male monkey that beats the old male leader and then goes to town on the females WILL be beaten up by ALL the females and then the old defeated male will be put back in power, with the help of some trusted lieutenants and an understanding he no longer has exclusive access to the females but still access. The defeated vicious monkey is all alone and will die from his wound without a group to protect him.
What monkey sires more children? The old wise leader who knows not to push his position? His lieutenants who can learn peacefully under a wise leader while fucking their brains out? Or the vicious monkey who had access for just a few days?
Genghis Khan is often called vicious but was he? His military approach was to kill the elite in a country and then treat the peasants pretty damned nicely. Gosh and who tells us he was a bad guy? Our elite... because they prefer to have their peasants kill each other off while they sit miles behind the front. That is how wars are supposed to be fought, destroy the body so you can strike a deal with the head. While GK killed the head and then was nice to the body.
French revolution is often said to be brutal. By the English... nobles who damn well knew that if the idea of a benevolent revolution and rule by the people was to spread, their necks would be next on the block.
Which ape is more successful, the Chimpanzee or the Bonobo (the make love not war ape)? Fact is strive costs a LOT of energy, the more relaxed you are, the more you can survive in hard times. There is a group of Baboons (typically a vicious monkey) that lives peacefully in gigantic groups because their environment is so poor in nutrition, they have to remain peaceful because fighting requires to much energy.
The thing to remember here is that there have been load of vicious cultures in human history. And they died out. Image if we acted like cats and each time we saw another cat, a half hour staredown was in order. How would we ever make even a small village work? Let alone metropolis with tens of millions of people living statistically in perfect peace with each other.
We are NOT a vicious monkey, are the industrious ant or the harmonious bee. Sure there are incidents but statistcally speaking all the murders in NY are insignificant compared to the total amount of human interaction going on. Netherlands Amsterdam, 1 mil people, 40 or so murders. A bee-hive, 44k a dozen murders (new queen killing other queens) and that is NOTHING to say of the killing off of elderly or sick bees, euthanisia is legal in Holland but it is not the "lets round up the oldies on Friday" that Fox news told you it was. It is Thursdays.
It has been proven that sleeping together with a loved one reduces stress, lowers heartbeat (slower is better as you only get so many beats per heart) and prolongs life in humans and chipmunks. Hell, indoor cats can be evil all they want but exceed 20 years in lifespan while their relatives on the street barely reach their teens. Viciousness doesn't pay of long term. oh, sometimes there are hickups but overal, the human race has grown ever more peaceful. And YES, long standing conflicts like the middle east or Afghanistan and Iraq PROOF this. The OLD way we saw all to recently in Ruwanda. It hasn't happened in a long time, not on that scale. Even the holocaust was different, Ruwanda was the people killing people. The germans have at least pretended (even if it is part a lie) that it was a small group that did the actual killing. The rest just stood by
In language, Neanderthal means someone stupid, slow and rather ugly. If I called you a Neanderthal it would be an insult... but what were they really like? And from that, what is homo sapiens (us) really like?
Our self image is rather that we are the smartest animal and the best hunter, the strongest, the brightest, the best looking. What if we weren't? What if we just were a rather vicious monkey that just fucked faster?
There are a LOT of theories about how Home Sapiens came to be and how the Neanderthal came not to be.
Some "facts" (It is a fast moving field and there is a lot of stuff that journalists might have made up/mis-quoted):
A monkey developed to walk upright in Africa.
A small group of these people, was forced out of Africa and passed into the Mediterranean and from there into Europe and the ENTIRE REST of the world.
Some claim that all non-africans (not just non-black, Australia natives are pretty dark but still descend from this expelled group (showing neatly how insane racists are)) people share a single mother from this group. Or at least are all far to closely related but it was long ago so that is okay:)
When this group spread across the world, they encountered other upright walking monkeys. Neanderthal had already been living in Europe for a LONG time before Homo Sapiens moved in.
There was more then one upright walking monkey.
There was more then one talking monkey.
Current theories is that we interbred (DNA evidence) but HOW? Did we freely mingle? Did one or the other keep each other as (sex) slaves. Did we rape each other in conflict?
A thing to remember is that if Neanderthal is a separate species, how can they interbreed? Breeds within a species can interbreed easily (see dogs) but between species it isn't supposed to be that easy. Of course there are exceptions, zebra/horse tiger/lion.
When Darwin published his work, the shock was NOT that Genesis wasn't true, they already knew that. The shock was that nature was nasty. Similar, it would be a shock to find out that Neanderthal was the smarter, stronger ape. Lets face it, how many of us want to be vicious Chimpansee who slaughters the Bonobo just for the fun of it? (Not saying the two do that but when we acknowledge a link to the apes, poop flinging is NOT mentioned.
Shrunken heads originate from a tribe that is often said to be the most nasty humans who ever lived. Did we outnasty the gentle Neanderthal? OR did the already established Neanderthal in Europe take that new tribe as sex slaves and then found that the slaves bred faster and replaced them from within? Or was the Neanderthal really just a dumb brute and we outwitted them? Did we mercilessly slaughter them or keep them around as slaves or did we just happily live together after all and we just merged?
Ultimately it shouldn't mean anything but people have based entire religions/dogmas on lies with terrible results, maybe it is time for our origin story to be based on truth.
Ireland and say Spain have radically different tax rates over profits over a sale. So... what can you do if you are devoid of all morals?
Say the product in Spain sells for 100 dollars but really costs 10 to produce in China. Then Ireland buys it from China for 10 and sells it to Spain for 99.99. The sale in Spain then to the consumer is for 100, giving the Spain division a 1 cent profit.
Of course, since you are making so little money in Spain, you do claim all the subsidies and tax breaks you can to support your struggling business.
The fact is that our society is run on the principle that everyone is nice, that everyone is going to try their best to live together and play well with each other. The order keepers can NEVER check everyone doesn't speed, doesn't run red lights, gives the right of way. AND we NEED that, just imagine HOW hard it would be to travel anywhere if you couldn't at least somewhat count of right of way, people stopping for signs and keeping a similar speed. Remember that those who hate the speed limit ONLY talk about the MAX speed limit, the speeders NEVER complain about SLOW vehicles being banned from certain roads. No speed limits means you can drive ANYTHING ANYWHERE.
It is the same with taxes, it would be un-workable to check everybody, so the system relies on most people paying their tax neatly.
Evil people/Republicans often claim the rich pay the majority of the tax burden... apart that from the fact it ain't as a big a burden if you are rich, that is only logical, those who have the majority of the money, pay the majority of the taxes. The hidden lie (you know it is a lie because a Republican said it) is that the rich SHOULD be paying FAR more. But countless loopholes make the likes of Romney have a taxrate of 11%. No wonder he wants to see a birth certificate but does not want to show his tax records. If the rich payed their due share (who benefits more from police patrols, the rich guy with police guard or the poor guy living in a police no-go area) there would be far more tax-revenue AND then EVERYONES taxes could come down. If one rich guy avoids paying 1 million, that is a LOT of minimum wage workers who have to make up the difference because no Republican tax avoider would think of spending less on the army.
Tax avoidance is a gigantic business, the economy of Ireland practically runs on it. And that is the huge problem, there is ALWAYS someone who benefits when society is harmed.
The funny thing is that any call for chance will get you millions of piss-poor Republicans living on benefits saying you shouldn't tax the rich! Willing slaves. Because one day YOU may own a slave, you defend your own slavery. The American Dream, the ultimate brainwash.
But according to Victorian Pharmacy, it used to be happen that a pill was made of heavy toxic metals and then swallowed to purge the system. Clear out the old tubes. The pill was pretty expensive but since it was metal it didn't dissolve or anything... and since swallowing it... shall we say... loosened stuff up a bit. It came out... ready for re-use... in the family.
EWH!
Then again, re-usable pill VS traditional method of getting a reliable core temperature reading. Can you guess how that is done?
I can see that you Americans might be worried about extra weight.:p
But serious, you are talking about a building fire. What about a forest fire? One that may last for days, even weeks? I do not know much about heat but I did do my tour in the snow and frostbite was far easier to spot then gradual undercooling but frostbite doesn't kill you. Undercooling does. Your outside can withstand a huge temperature range especially for short times. Your insides cannot and overheating and undercooling are serious concerns for people operating in extremes.
You have to ask a doctor, all we were told is to constantly check each other and if one was especially dimwitted (lets face it, we were all guys to stupid to escape the draft) to immediately report it and not leave them alone. It would have been a great deal easier if we could just check a readout and see that your buddy was just asleep on his feet and not freezing to dead.
I can imagine that firefighters in the middle of a hell hole nation breaking record temperatures fighting week long forest fires in what is in essence a insulating container doing hard work might be at risk from overheating. It happens to sportsmen in shorts.
It does you no credit to compare your 20 min house fires with massive forest fires in 50 degree Celsius heat. Also, why do you THINK you are checked over? Because people DIED before that was introduced. Your predeccesors probably look at all the stuff you are carrying and see nothing but a nancy boy. But they are dead and you are not yet. Lets trust that the doctors in this case want to make sure these Australian firefighters stay alive and not just make them swallow poopie pills for laughs.
Due diligence exists because the alternative is allowing ignorance of the law to be a defense. And that does NOT WORK. Proof? Patents. IBM advises its people NOT to research patents to see if they might already have been filed or if prior art exists because in patent law, ignorance IS a defense. And it SUCKS!
If you allow ignorance of the law to be a defense, anyone can simply claim of anything at all that they didn't know and get of free. Your turtle soup maker could import turtles from anywhere at all, endangered as hell and simply say "I didn't know" and get away with it. Your idea is totally unworkable UNLESS you are one of those libertarians who think there should be no law in which case I will just book a one way ticket on your credit card to Somalia.
No doubt you think killing of endangered species for soup is all perfectly fine. Of course if I set foot at night on your lawn to ask directions, you are free to gun me down. Laws only are right when they protect you, when they stop you from harming others, they are wrong. Right?
Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Oh and it would help if your really bad artist friend actually linked to some real cases, with the FULL story. Not like people talking about the 3 strikes rule and then ONLY mention the last light crime, NOT how the cookie thief was out for one hour after serving 20 years for eating babies before being thrown back in jail to rot.
The aircraft could have been safer with conventional doors. Other aircraft were economical with conventional doors. People died because Boeing wanted to cut costs and then was sloppy with it.
And it seems they did it again. Everyone knows these batteries are risky but to save a bit of weight, Boeing went for them regardless AND just a tiny bit into production, it becomes clear they did NOT engineer it correctly. Or test it for that matter. This ain't software "engineering" in real world engineering you either are sure, or you don't do it. It is the same logic that blew up the shuttle managers overriding engineers.
As everyone should know, modern airliners are pressurized. Now it is generally considered a BAD idea if it was to depressurize in midflight by say a window or door blowing out. How do you make it hard for this to happen? Well, you make the door open to the INSIDE, so that when locked and the airplane is under pressure, the pressure will press the door INTO the frame, making it impossible to blow out. This is why airline doors open INTO the aircraft and NOT out.
Basic stuff right? Only a company with no care for safety would change it.
Well boeing did it, so they could shove more cargo in it.
But surely then they would build the door really really well and have it tested really really well?
no... they did not and a LOT of people died when the door inenvitably did blow out and brought down the airplane.
Boeing has ALWAYS taken shortcuts and never given a shit about the risk and the FAA has always let them get away with it. Read up on the cargo door, it took a second incident for Boeing to be told to fix it BUT it was allowed to keep the outside opening door despite it being an obvious weak area.
You have to remember that in airliners, the interests are so gigantic that there is gigantic pressure on the engineers to find shortcuts and for those who are charged to oversee safety to look away so that their nations industry isn't hampered.
Notice how many episodes of the series that should never have been, start with an artsy fartsy act of a crew that really doesn't seem to have a day job. The Enterprise is a floating luxury hotel that runs itself and were nobody ever has to get their hands dirty, leaving its passengers to pursue the arts and not be very good at it.
The PROBLEM is... your art has no value. Very little art has. You can see this with the art shops run by bored rich house wives that are often little more then tax dodges or in some cases active money laundering operations or used for bribes. "No no, I won't slip you a brown envolope... say, that painting in your wives shop, what would you say that is worth *wink wink*".
You can see it for the lower classes on youtube, only a tiny fraction has views over half a dozen, millions of video's have no views whatsoever. The simple fact is that the modern world doesn't need as many artists as it once did. Older ages, before replication of art was easily available to all, needed every painting, every book, every performance done by hand. It was a golden age for artists. These days, one artist can supply the needs for the entire planet. Consider comedy: Once every time you wanted to hear a joke, you needed to pay someone to tell it. Now you can just replay the same video over and over of the best comedians the world has ever produced.
Why should I pay you for your crappy work when I can experience the masters for peanuts?
Really, WATCH ST:TNG, it is nothing but layabouts going to each others performances. Work? That happens to other people. The series Friends is roughly the same idea, that the "elite" doesn't have to work. The Victorians thought the same BUT the Victorians did it over the backs of a massive work force who worked very hard indeed. The 90's tried to sell us the idea that EVERYONE could be the elite and that their would be a natural demand for all the creative works created by the entitled non-gifted. This hasn't turned out to be the case. A few artist have gotten really really rich and the majority of the plebs by cheap reproductions of their work, rather then original works in their price range.
There have been many novel ideas about future economies where hard work is no longer the core of the economy and basically, none of them really work out because sooner or later so far, someone has to do the work AND there is always someone willing to launch the B-ark into space. The masses are not going to support an idle middle/upper class for very long... well maybe just long enough to help them up the little steps to the block.
The US economy RAN on all those boring factory jobs that people in the movies always want to escape from but that were for decades the places fathers and mothers went to earn the money to raise their kids. See "An Officer and a Gentleman" the girl is working in a factory making cardboard boxes. Hardly inspiring work but all the girls who do NOT marry a jet pilot, it is their only source of income until they retire or die. It ain't glamorous, it ain't the stuff of dreams but all those workers payed their full taxes while the likes of Romney didn't. The economy runs on factory workers, not the elite. The elite can't and won't pay for millions of workers sitting idle reading Shakespeare and writing sonnets. Neither will the workers support an ever growing middle class doing nothing either.
You can try to move the working to China but then they will just do what the Koreans and Japanese did before them, become the elite themselves and make their own phones. And kiddies, all the idiocy you can come up with why the Chinese can never be creators the same was said about the Koreans and the Chinese. Hell, go back a bit further and the Brits said the same thing about the colonies (that is you Americans) when they outsourced farming, so the British country side could be reserved for gardening, parks and recreational hunting. And then the US copied industry too and the British economy has been sliding into obscurity ever since.
There are to crimes, degrees. Not all murder is equal, not all theft is equal and not all corruption is equal. It is one thing to take money for advertising a stupid product and quite another for advertising a murderous criminal organization preying on the weak minded.
That you don't get this shows you to be a poor human being, no doubt you would view the theft of a loaf of bread the same as the theft of a diamond.
Take music. The CD's are produced in China to lower costs, this is legal. You buy them from China, ILLEGAL PIRACY!
Outsource production, perfectly legal. Buy imports, pay max taxes including taxes on shipping PLUS a customs fee PLUS a fee for the shipping agency ON TOP of the shipment fee for it all... AND STILL it is often cheaper...
The global economy is there to benefit the rich, not the poor.
Most people will probably know a stoner, someone who isn't all there. Absentminded, procrastinating loser. But I have known a stoner who never did pot. The guy was just an absentminded loser. Nice enough but weird and logic was never his strongest point and he tended to believe whatever he was told.
So it is back to the old debate, what comes first, the chicken or the egg. Do stoners do pot or does pot create stoners?
The research linked in this case is nice and useless as usual. Lesser access to education. So, how do you explain stoners then in countries were education is free and accessible by all?
One simple, but highly unacceptable answer is this: There are only 24 hours in the day, 8 are spend asleep, 4 spend on body necessities like eating, washing, crapping, leaving 12 hours to do something. Anything.
Who is more likely to end up a stoner, the kid who spend his free time studying OR the kid who spend his free time smoking. No, don't give me that crap about drugs expanding your mind, if that worked you could have long since proofed it clinically, going "ooh, my hands" is NOT mind expanding, it is a sign your brain has fallen out. Scoop it up before the cat gets it.
It is the same reason sluts don't do well in school. It is a fact that girls outperform boys in every field, right up to the point girls get intrested in boys and they start falling behind. The girl who studies after school will do better in school, then the girl who is banging the sports team but the girl that does the teacher beats them both.
Think about it: Who is the better coder, the nerd who writes on slashdot in his free time OR the guy who spends his free time coding? (Take the recent Doom 3 code is beautiful article. The world has those who admire code and those who write it. Guess who makes the most money?)
Take this one: Most famous people, barely watch TV. It makes sense, you don't get famous for being a couch potatoe. People who got famous for their achievements, had to first achieve something and you don't achieve anything hanging in front of the idiot tube. (Take programs like QI and HIGNFY, the lead intellectuals on those shows are often barely coherent on popular media often getting no closer in 2013 then being aware that Star Wars movie thingy is getting pretty big. They know the births and deaths of countless dead people but can't name the 4th spice girl... and yes, it does say something about me that my current media events are decades old)
Does the idiot tube make you stupid OR do stupid people have nothing better to do then watch the idiot tube?
When you read of a self-made man like Warren Buffet, you got to realize that he didn't post on slashdot, watch TV, follow his favorite soccer team, spend his first fortune on a PARTY!. He worked, every day, every hour and STILL does it and lives in a rather ordinary house, driving a decent but not super flashy car and basically is not you, the loser.
Now I am not going into a debate about whose life is better spend because ultimately that is all about personal taste BUT I am going to say that how you end up in life is in large part due to yourself and NOT your race/culture/parents but due to your own choices. And that you didn't see a choice... well... that is a large part of it. The stoner who bitches about people hating stoners and not being able to get a job isn't jobless because he does drugs, he is jobless because he is the type of person who instead of making an effort, does drugs instead.
That is why some people ARE successful despite doing the same drugs. That is NOT proof drugs have no harmful effect, it is proofs that being successful is mostly about drive and ambition. Doing weed doesn't make you a winner or a loser, the reason you DID weed makes you a winner or a loser.
And to be honest, the world has more room for losers then winners. Only one pothead can be president. But there is infinite space on the couch.
Americans have a gun fetish, it comes from their culture, their image of themselves, they ALL think they are still frontier cowboys taming the west. They are not. Aussies sipping lattes in Starbucks with a cinnamon bun STILL see themselves as sons of Crocodile Dundee even as their GPS directs them straight into a national park. It is just that the Dundee image never had a gun. Didn't need to, he is a mans man. Americans are girly man with small penises and they need to compensate with big cars and big guns.
For self defense, you want the smallest revolver possible as it is the easiest to handle, the quickest to fire, the easiest to keep near you, doesn't jam, requires the least maintenance and at close range is still highly lethal. An automatic rifle is totally useless, it is the reason any soldier required to operate in crowded areas switches firepower for a smaller weapon.
See the school shooting, he DITCHED the assault rifle and killed with pistols. The whole fascination with the bush-master makes no sense EXCEPT to compensate for personal short-comings AND for a fantasy many Americans have of wishing the apocalypse, the zombie-hord, the civil war, to happen right now so they can stop pretending to be civilized and kill THEM! Doesn't really matter who THEM is, as long as THEM is not US.
The entire NRA is based around the idea that you need a gatling gun to defend against burglars or even would be rapist. If you think about it (the Americans among you, if it starts hurting to much, look away, the scary man is almost finished with his long hurting brain words) this makes no sense. A burglar/rapist/assault happens when you LEAST expect it. A machine gun is like the Maginot Line it only works if you are not dealing with a sneaky scoundrel. Most criminals are sneaky and will strike when you are asleep, unaware, unprepared. The rotters.
What good then is a Gatling gun in the basement? Or an assault rifle, with an over sized magazine not maintained in the last decade in a gun cabinet? What you NEED if you want to live a world with guns is a small revolver you can grasp instantly and is absolutely reliable at short range while still half asleep while you call the police.
The simple fact is that the NRA is the most stupid organization in the world, they could win the debate in a heartbeat just by showing how much safer the US is for law abiding people by linking to the thousands of cases of honest citizens successfully defending themselves against criminals with their legally owned guns...
But the NRA does NOT present these thousands of stories a year... why not? That is after all the reason for civilians to own guns, to defend themselves, so why not link to all these success stories that surely must be there?
oh wait... there aren't. The stories simply don't exist. The entire idea that gun owners can defend themselves just isn't true, it doesn't happen. What does happen is that people get burgled precisly FOR their guns, that innocents get killed while cleaning/playing with guns and when the gun owners inevitably looses their mind, they go on a rampage.
If civilian gun ownership made sense, the US would be the safest place in the world to life in. Is it?
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All I can say, well played universe! There is now nothing left to rape. The only thing to finish it off is to make me choke on my own bile as I write this [CARRIER LOST]
So... customers care more about price then minor feature differences but are willing to pay a premium for Apple products that have minor feature differences...
That makes sense.
Oh and smartphones are hardly a budget market at the moment, if you want a budget phone, you get one for 50 dollars or less without a contract. 500-600 dollars for a smartphone is high-end. And they sell like hotcakes.
I am seriously starting to dislike Android. When it runs, it is fine BUT if you want to upgrade (coming from a DOS, Unix, Linux and Windows background) FORGET about it. It is gigantic fucking mess where you are totally at the mercy of the manufacturer as to whether your model gets an upgrade. Cyanogenmod isn't an answer either, it is FAR from a generic Android that just "works". If Android was Linux you would have distro's that ONLY ran on ONE model of Dell and then had 1 year after release small niggling bugs like the monitor not yet working...
Now I grew up with Unix, Dos, Windows and Linux. I am no stranger to having to hunt for drivers and have to deal with weird configurations and installing stuff in just the right order. But with ALL the above, you at least have the OPTION to do so.
With Android? No drivers, no configs, no nothing. Either you spend ages learning how to cook a release to tweak it or you just don't. The debug options to are shockingly bad even compared to Windows. It would be a LOT better if there was just a default install you could do and install drivers that Google required each company to make available for install if they want to use Android.
But they didn't and you suddenly realize just how fucking open the Windows platform is by comparison, just how complete Linux is.
I am either going to stick with Nexus devices in the future or hope an alternative emerges because I am NOT going to be stuck with a device that is not going to be updated by Samsung ever again.
You don't have to differentiate with screen/case etc. JUST FUCKING UPDATE YOUR FUCKING DEVICE! That will make you fucking unique in Android land. The first company that manages to release a device that can ALWAYS run the latest Android version will leave ALL the other companies in the dust.
I played Lord of the Rings Online the most and was a casual raid leader (meaning I organized and ran raids for casual players where often the loot would go to someone who had a birthday or fought well or been really unlucky rather then loot tables, I also didn't care about levels or experience). They were somewhat popular and I was asked to lead other groups... and then found out that in the NON-PUG groups, getting people to talk was a LOT easier. In the PUG raids everyone had sound on but for some reason few had a microphone. Suddenly in the closed raids, most had. And high voices.
Turns out I had been gaming with a lot of women. And I mean a LOT. Some were raids were majority female but when I asked them to join a pug something became clear... they were willing to play BUT could I not reveal they were female.
I have had several discussions online and in the real world were I was told about the kind of abuse female players receive. And this is NOT the rage kind when someone just says "bitch" or the sexual innuendo. Women talk like that too. It were attacks that yes as the AC says, you would expect in Klan meeting. One type of attack is that women have no right to play the game... I mean seriously. WTF?
AND it is not just trolling, there are a lot of REAL misogynists online. They can't vent their putrid bile in real life because they would get beaten up but online they let go.
So... the women hide online and only reveal their gender if they feel safe. AND THAT IS NOT OKAY! If you think it is, then I hate your fucking guts and hope you die before spreading your diseased genes. Because THIS attitude is what fuels extremists by tolerating them. It is basically nothing else then "if you don't want to be raped, don't reveal your gender". It is YOUR kind that created the burkha.
People should be free to be who they are. Yes, there can be gentle ribbing like Q.I. makes fun of homosexuals and hetero's alike BUT that is NOT what gay and female gamers are talking about. Gay and female gamers don't want special regonizition, they simply want to be able to be who they are without getting attacked simply for speaking with a high voice.
And only a closet bigot would start an argument over whether they got the right to be who they are.
Never take security advice from a guy who can't read. The static content web servers use 1024 bit keys, the encryption servers 2048. So you can spend a small fortune decrypting the content on static content web servers. Wheee!
What is the issue here? Or are you not aware that New Zealand, the home of Mega is very early in the timezones? The day practically starts in NZ.
Under EU law at least AT&T would be in trouble for violating privacy laws, they didn't protect private customer data and that is a violation.
So what was the reason this guy who went to a reporter (not just published the list or sold it) prosecuted? And why is there no link of said reporter defending his source?
This case could not have happened in say my own country. There have been cases were it was TRIED but the judges slapped it down hard. So... what part is missing from the story (we are reading just one side of it) or is the US really that different? I can't imagine the US has no privacy laws at all that AT&T would not have violated by making data so easely available. Can't someone bring a case against AT&T? Making this guy evidence in a far great case, possibly worth some outrageous sum in a settlement and worthy as a bargaining chip to get this case dropped?
What is missing from this story? Because on its own it seems to make no sense. Why should AT&T risk bad publicity when a simple "don't do that again" would have buried the story years ago.
You won't get a politician to admit it but everybody knows the US is a major supporter of terrorism and also easily one of the great human rights violators and has been for a long time. Anything from the mass slaughter of natives to agent orange to supporting murderous dictorial regimes to the support of the taliban in Afghanistan when the Russians were there.
As for backing Pakistan, only a complete fool would do that, or a country totally paranoid over communism making it fight the largest democracy in the world by supporting one of the most primitive backward nations on earth. (Hint for fox viewers, India is a democracy, Pakistan isn't).
The US has a long continuing history of being not just a moral vacuum but actually on the side of evil, supporting the nazi regime (to the point that when volunteer American aircrew were bombing ball bearing plants at great personal cost, a shipment of ball bearings went from the US through Sweden that totally off-set the destroyed production), sheltering Nazi war criminals even those guilty of killing US soldiers who had been captured (employed at NASA).
Only the most foolish uncultured people are going to be shocked by the claim that the US is funding terrorism, it is a simple fact that has been proven countless times beyond a shadow of a doubt.
HOWEVER: If I give you a gun to commit a murder, I am guilty. But you DO have free choice, you don't HAVE to do the murder, not even if I give you a million dollars. Yes, the person who hires the assassin is just as guilty AS the assassin but that doesn't absolve the assassin of blame.
The US has found many a willing regime/group in its fight against democracy in the world (remember, India is leaning close to communism then capatalism but freely elected IN a working democracy), it makes it an evil nation, or at least a nation of "wir haben es nicht gewust" (because we made sure not to look) lead by few very evil advisors like Kissinger a man who history would do well to remember in the same line as an Eichman. But it does not stop Pakistan from being an nation of evil itself. It is a nation that has been at war with India since its creation and has been linked countless time to terrorism. India isn't similarly linked in retaliation. The only reason it exists is because the US keeps supporting it else it would long since have collapsed into a non-state like Afghanistan. Just tribal lords fighting each other.
There are a lot of people who hate the US and there are a lot of reasons to hate the US but to many people use that as an excuse to excuse everything anyone else does. There is room for more blame in this world.
He wasn't sentenced (or even found guilty yet) and the claim wasn't for 50 years. But hey, facts happen to other people right?
The moment you start spouting nonsense like this, the rest of your opinion is automatically suspect as well. After all, if you don't know the facts, how can you form an accurate opinion?
Cases like this get very emotional but if you ever want to change anything, you need to argue with facts, not with made up stuff. Liars like mangu just make it easier for people on the other side to dismiss the opposition as being ill-informed morons whose rants have no value.
And with the 11th bride walks up to the altar, you got to wonder just how stupid she really is. Many a MS apologists is really just suffering from battered wife syndrome "nobody understands him, he will chance, he told me!".
Sad. Although I find it a useful measurement to see if a person is worth taking notice off.
For instance "Sponge Bath" and "DavidClarkeHR" can be filed under the heading, to stupid to live. It ain't a nice thing to do but god does it save time and I rather be filed under nasty then stupid.
Dogs are more vicious then humans, but we humans completely dominate dogs. Cats are vicious bastards but the number of incidents of cats killing people are remarkably low (because cats are very good at hiding evidence no doubt).
Viciousness is NOT a survival trait unlike what a LOT of people believe. Darwin shocked people NOT by telling them they were descended from monkeys but by telling them nature was nasty and so were monkeys. BUT more recent research among monkeys has filmed evidence that for instance a male monkey that beats the old male leader and then goes to town on the females WILL be beaten up by ALL the females and then the old defeated male will be put back in power, with the help of some trusted lieutenants and an understanding he no longer has exclusive access to the females but still access. The defeated vicious monkey is all alone and will die from his wound without a group to protect him.
What monkey sires more children? The old wise leader who knows not to push his position? His lieutenants who can learn peacefully under a wise leader while fucking their brains out? Or the vicious monkey who had access for just a few days?
Genghis Khan is often called vicious but was he? His military approach was to kill the elite in a country and then treat the peasants pretty damned nicely. Gosh and who tells us he was a bad guy? Our elite... because they prefer to have their peasants kill each other off while they sit miles behind the front. That is how wars are supposed to be fought, destroy the body so you can strike a deal with the head. While GK killed the head and then was nice to the body.
French revolution is often said to be brutal. By the English... nobles who damn well knew that if the idea of a benevolent revolution and rule by the people was to spread, their necks would be next on the block.
Which ape is more successful, the Chimpanzee or the Bonobo (the make love not war ape)? Fact is strive costs a LOT of energy, the more relaxed you are, the more you can survive in hard times. There is a group of Baboons (typically a vicious monkey) that lives peacefully in gigantic groups because their environment is so poor in nutrition, they have to remain peaceful because fighting requires to much energy.
The thing to remember here is that there have been load of vicious cultures in human history. And they died out. Image if we acted like cats and each time we saw another cat, a half hour staredown was in order. How would we ever make even a small village work? Let alone metropolis with tens of millions of people living statistically in perfect peace with each other.
We are NOT a vicious monkey, are the industrious ant or the harmonious bee. Sure there are incidents but statistcally speaking all the murders in NY are insignificant compared to the total amount of human interaction going on. Netherlands Amsterdam, 1 mil people, 40 or so murders. A bee-hive, 44k a dozen murders (new queen killing other queens) and that is NOTHING to say of the killing off of elderly or sick bees, euthanisia is legal in Holland but it is not the "lets round up the oldies on Friday" that Fox news told you it was. It is Thursdays.
It has been proven that sleeping together with a loved one reduces stress, lowers heartbeat (slower is better as you only get so many beats per heart) and prolongs life in humans and chipmunks. Hell, indoor cats can be evil all they want but exceed 20 years in lifespan while their relatives on the street barely reach their teens. Viciousness doesn't pay of long term. oh, sometimes there are hickups but overal, the human race has grown ever more peaceful. And YES, long standing conflicts like the middle east or Afghanistan and Iraq PROOF this. The OLD way we saw all to recently in Ruwanda. It hasn't happened in a long time, not on that scale. Even the holocaust was different, Ruwanda was the people killing people. The germans have at least pretended (even if it is part a lie) that it was a small group that did the actual killing. The rest just stood by
In language, Neanderthal means someone stupid, slow and rather ugly. If I called you a Neanderthal it would be an insult... but what were they really like? And from that, what is homo sapiens (us) really like?
Our self image is rather that we are the smartest animal and the best hunter, the strongest, the brightest, the best looking. What if we weren't? What if we just were a rather vicious monkey that just fucked faster?
There are a LOT of theories about how Home Sapiens came to be and how the Neanderthal came not to be.
Some "facts" (It is a fast moving field and there is a lot of stuff that journalists might have made up/mis-quoted):
Current theories is that we interbred (DNA evidence) but HOW? Did we freely mingle? Did one or the other keep each other as (sex) slaves. Did we rape each other in conflict?
A thing to remember is that if Neanderthal is a separate species, how can they interbreed? Breeds within a species can interbreed easily (see dogs) but between species it isn't supposed to be that easy. Of course there are exceptions, zebra/horse tiger/lion.
When Darwin published his work, the shock was NOT that Genesis wasn't true, they already knew that. The shock was that nature was nasty. Similar, it would be a shock to find out that Neanderthal was the smarter, stronger ape. Lets face it, how many of us want to be vicious Chimpansee who slaughters the Bonobo just for the fun of it? (Not saying the two do that but when we acknowledge a link to the apes, poop flinging is NOT mentioned.
Shrunken heads originate from a tribe that is often said to be the most nasty humans who ever lived. Did we outnasty the gentle Neanderthal? OR did the already established Neanderthal in Europe take that new tribe as sex slaves and then found that the slaves bred faster and replaced them from within? Or was the Neanderthal really just a dumb brute and we outwitted them? Did we mercilessly slaughter them or keep them around as slaves or did we just happily live together after all and we just merged?
Ultimately it shouldn't mean anything but people have based entire religions/dogmas on lies with terrible results, maybe it is time for our origin story to be based on truth.
Ireland and say Spain have radically different tax rates over profits over a sale. So... what can you do if you are devoid of all morals?
Say the product in Spain sells for 100 dollars but really costs 10 to produce in China. Then Ireland buys it from China for 10 and sells it to Spain for 99.99. The sale in Spain then to the consumer is for 100, giving the Spain division a 1 cent profit.
Of course, since you are making so little money in Spain, you do claim all the subsidies and tax breaks you can to support your struggling business.
The fact is that our society is run on the principle that everyone is nice, that everyone is going to try their best to live together and play well with each other. The order keepers can NEVER check everyone doesn't speed, doesn't run red lights, gives the right of way. AND we NEED that, just imagine HOW hard it would be to travel anywhere if you couldn't at least somewhat count of right of way, people stopping for signs and keeping a similar speed. Remember that those who hate the speed limit ONLY talk about the MAX speed limit, the speeders NEVER complain about SLOW vehicles being banned from certain roads. No speed limits means you can drive ANYTHING ANYWHERE.
It is the same with taxes, it would be un-workable to check everybody, so the system relies on most people paying their tax neatly.
Evil people/Republicans often claim the rich pay the majority of the tax burden... apart that from the fact it ain't as a big a burden if you are rich, that is only logical, those who have the majority of the money, pay the majority of the taxes. The hidden lie (you know it is a lie because a Republican said it) is that the rich SHOULD be paying FAR more. But countless loopholes make the likes of Romney have a taxrate of 11%. No wonder he wants to see a birth certificate but does not want to show his tax records. If the rich payed their due share (who benefits more from police patrols, the rich guy with police guard or the poor guy living in a police no-go area) there would be far more tax-revenue AND then EVERYONES taxes could come down. If one rich guy avoids paying 1 million, that is a LOT of minimum wage workers who have to make up the difference because no Republican tax avoider would think of spending less on the army.
Tax avoidance is a gigantic business, the economy of Ireland practically runs on it. And that is the huge problem, there is ALWAYS someone who benefits when society is harmed.
The funny thing is that any call for chance will get you millions of piss-poor Republicans living on benefits saying you shouldn't tax the rich! Willing slaves. Because one day YOU may own a slave, you defend your own slavery. The American Dream, the ultimate brainwash.
EWH!
Then again, re-usable pill VS traditional method of getting a reliable core temperature reading. Can you guess how that is done?
I can see that you Americans might be worried about extra weight. :p
But serious, you are talking about a building fire. What about a forest fire? One that may last for days, even weeks? I do not know much about heat but I did do my tour in the snow and frostbite was far easier to spot then gradual undercooling but frostbite doesn't kill you. Undercooling does. Your outside can withstand a huge temperature range especially for short times. Your insides cannot and overheating and undercooling are serious concerns for people operating in extremes.
You have to ask a doctor, all we were told is to constantly check each other and if one was especially dimwitted (lets face it, we were all guys to stupid to escape the draft) to immediately report it and not leave them alone. It would have been a great deal easier if we could just check a readout and see that your buddy was just asleep on his feet and not freezing to dead.
I can imagine that firefighters in the middle of a hell hole nation breaking record temperatures fighting week long forest fires in what is in essence a insulating container doing hard work might be at risk from overheating. It happens to sportsmen in shorts.
It does you no credit to compare your 20 min house fires with massive forest fires in 50 degree Celsius heat. Also, why do you THINK you are checked over? Because people DIED before that was introduced. Your predeccesors probably look at all the stuff you are carrying and see nothing but a nancy boy. But they are dead and you are not yet. Lets trust that the doctors in this case want to make sure these Australian firefighters stay alive and not just make them swallow poopie pills for laughs.
Due diligence exists because the alternative is allowing ignorance of the law to be a defense. And that does NOT WORK. Proof? Patents. IBM advises its people NOT to research patents to see if they might already have been filed or if prior art exists because in patent law, ignorance IS a defense. And it SUCKS!
If you allow ignorance of the law to be a defense, anyone can simply claim of anything at all that they didn't know and get of free. Your turtle soup maker could import turtles from anywhere at all, endangered as hell and simply say "I didn't know" and get away with it. Your idea is totally unworkable UNLESS you are one of those libertarians who think there should be no law in which case I will just book a one way ticket on your credit card to Somalia.
No doubt you think killing of endangered species for soup is all perfectly fine. Of course if I set foot at night on your lawn to ask directions, you are free to gun me down. Laws only are right when they protect you, when they stop you from harming others, they are wrong. Right?
Ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Oh and it would help if your really bad artist friend actually linked to some real cases, with the FULL story. Not like people talking about the 3 strikes rule and then ONLY mention the last light crime, NOT how the cookie thief was out for one hour after serving 20 years for eating babies before being thrown back in jail to rot.
And it seems they did it again. Everyone knows these batteries are risky but to save a bit of weight, Boeing went for them regardless AND just a tiny bit into production, it becomes clear they did NOT engineer it correctly. Or test it for that matter. This ain't software "engineering" in real world engineering you either are sure, or you don't do it. It is the same logic that blew up the shuttle managers overriding engineers.
As everyone should know, modern airliners are pressurized. Now it is generally considered a BAD idea if it was to depressurize in midflight by say a window or door blowing out. How do you make it hard for this to happen? Well, you make the door open to the INSIDE, so that when locked and the airplane is under pressure, the pressure will press the door INTO the frame, making it impossible to blow out. This is why airline doors open INTO the aircraft and NOT out.
Basic stuff right? Only a company with no care for safety would change it.
Well boeing did it, so they could shove more cargo in it.
But surely then they would build the door really really well and have it tested really really well?
no... they did not and a LOT of people died when the door inenvitably did blow out and brought down the airplane.
Boeing has ALWAYS taken shortcuts and never given a shit about the risk and the FAA has always let them get away with it. Read up on the cargo door, it took a second incident for Boeing to be told to fix it BUT it was allowed to keep the outside opening door despite it being an obvious weak area.
You have to remember that in airliners, the interests are so gigantic that there is gigantic pressure on the engineers to find shortcuts and for those who are charged to oversee safety to look away so that their nations industry isn't hampered.
Notice how many episodes of the series that should never have been, start with an artsy fartsy act of a crew that really doesn't seem to have a day job. The Enterprise is a floating luxury hotel that runs itself and were nobody ever has to get their hands dirty, leaving its passengers to pursue the arts and not be very good at it.
The PROBLEM is... your art has no value. Very little art has. You can see this with the art shops run by bored rich house wives that are often little more then tax dodges or in some cases active money laundering operations or used for bribes. "No no, I won't slip you a brown envolope... say, that painting in your wives shop, what would you say that is worth *wink wink*".
You can see it for the lower classes on youtube, only a tiny fraction has views over half a dozen, millions of video's have no views whatsoever. The simple fact is that the modern world doesn't need as many artists as it once did. Older ages, before replication of art was easily available to all, needed every painting, every book, every performance done by hand. It was a golden age for artists. These days, one artist can supply the needs for the entire planet. Consider comedy: Once every time you wanted to hear a joke, you needed to pay someone to tell it. Now you can just replay the same video over and over of the best comedians the world has ever produced.
Why should I pay you for your crappy work when I can experience the masters for peanuts?
Really, WATCH ST:TNG, it is nothing but layabouts going to each others performances. Work? That happens to other people. The series Friends is roughly the same idea, that the "elite" doesn't have to work. The Victorians thought the same BUT the Victorians did it over the backs of a massive work force who worked very hard indeed. The 90's tried to sell us the idea that EVERYONE could be the elite and that their would be a natural demand for all the creative works created by the entitled non-gifted. This hasn't turned out to be the case. A few artist have gotten really really rich and the majority of the plebs by cheap reproductions of their work, rather then original works in their price range.
There have been many novel ideas about future economies where hard work is no longer the core of the economy and basically, none of them really work out because sooner or later so far, someone has to do the work AND there is always someone willing to launch the B-ark into space. The masses are not going to support an idle middle/upper class for very long... well maybe just long enough to help them up the little steps to the block.
The US economy RAN on all those boring factory jobs that people in the movies always want to escape from but that were for decades the places fathers and mothers went to earn the money to raise their kids. See "An Officer and a Gentleman" the girl is working in a factory making cardboard boxes. Hardly inspiring work but all the girls who do NOT marry a jet pilot, it is their only source of income until they retire or die. It ain't glamorous, it ain't the stuff of dreams but all those workers payed their full taxes while the likes of Romney didn't. The economy runs on factory workers, not the elite. The elite can't and won't pay for millions of workers sitting idle reading Shakespeare and writing sonnets. Neither will the workers support an ever growing middle class doing nothing either.
You can try to move the working to China but then they will just do what the Koreans and Japanese did before them, become the elite themselves and make their own phones. And kiddies, all the idiocy you can come up with why the Chinese can never be creators the same was said about the Koreans and the Chinese. Hell, go back a bit further and the Brits said the same thing about the colonies (that is you Americans) when they outsourced farming, so the British country side could be reserved for gardening, parks and recreational hunting. And then the US copied industry too and the British economy has been sliding into obscurity ever since.
There are to crimes, degrees. Not all murder is equal, not all theft is equal and not all corruption is equal. It is one thing to take money for advertising a stupid product and quite another for advertising a murderous criminal organization preying on the weak minded.
That you don't get this shows you to be a poor human being, no doubt you would view the theft of a loaf of bread the same as the theft of a diamond.
Yes, London did have riots, they were FAR less lethal then the LA riots. Which were in the US and were NOT stopped because of home owners owning guns.
Take music. The CD's are produced in China to lower costs, this is legal. You buy them from China, ILLEGAL PIRACY!
Outsource production, perfectly legal. Buy imports, pay max taxes including taxes on shipping PLUS a customs fee PLUS a fee for the shipping agency ON TOP of the shipment fee for it all... AND STILL it is often cheaper...
The global economy is there to benefit the rich, not the poor.
Most people will probably know a stoner, someone who isn't all there. Absentminded, procrastinating loser. But I have known a stoner who never did pot. The guy was just an absentminded loser. Nice enough but weird and logic was never his strongest point and he tended to believe whatever he was told.
So it is back to the old debate, what comes first, the chicken or the egg. Do stoners do pot or does pot create stoners?
The research linked in this case is nice and useless as usual. Lesser access to education. So, how do you explain stoners then in countries were education is free and accessible by all?
One simple, but highly unacceptable answer is this: There are only 24 hours in the day, 8 are spend asleep, 4 spend on body necessities like eating, washing, crapping, leaving 12 hours to do something. Anything.
Who is more likely to end up a stoner, the kid who spend his free time studying OR the kid who spend his free time smoking. No, don't give me that crap about drugs expanding your mind, if that worked you could have long since proofed it clinically, going "ooh, my hands" is NOT mind expanding, it is a sign your brain has fallen out. Scoop it up before the cat gets it.
It is the same reason sluts don't do well in school. It is a fact that girls outperform boys in every field, right up to the point girls get intrested in boys and they start falling behind. The girl who studies after school will do better in school, then the girl who is banging the sports team but the girl that does the teacher beats them both.
Think about it: Who is the better coder, the nerd who writes on slashdot in his free time OR the guy who spends his free time coding? (Take the recent Doom 3 code is beautiful article. The world has those who admire code and those who write it. Guess who makes the most money?)
Take this one: Most famous people, barely watch TV. It makes sense, you don't get famous for being a couch potatoe. People who got famous for their achievements, had to first achieve something and you don't achieve anything hanging in front of the idiot tube. (Take programs like QI and HIGNFY, the lead intellectuals on those shows are often barely coherent on popular media often getting no closer in 2013 then being aware that Star Wars movie thingy is getting pretty big. They know the births and deaths of countless dead people but can't name the 4th spice girl... and yes, it does say something about me that my current media events are decades old)
Does the idiot tube make you stupid OR do stupid people have nothing better to do then watch the idiot tube?
When you read of a self-made man like Warren Buffet, you got to realize that he didn't post on slashdot, watch TV, follow his favorite soccer team, spend his first fortune on a PARTY!. He worked, every day, every hour and STILL does it and lives in a rather ordinary house, driving a decent but not super flashy car and basically is not you, the loser.
Now I am not going into a debate about whose life is better spend because ultimately that is all about personal taste BUT I am going to say that how you end up in life is in large part due to yourself and NOT your race/culture/parents but due to your own choices. And that you didn't see a choice... well... that is a large part of it. The stoner who bitches about people hating stoners and not being able to get a job isn't jobless because he does drugs, he is jobless because he is the type of person who instead of making an effort, does drugs instead.
That is why some people ARE successful despite doing the same drugs. That is NOT proof drugs have no harmful effect, it is proofs that being successful is mostly about drive and ambition. Doing weed doesn't make you a winner or a loser, the reason you DID weed makes you a winner or a loser.
And to be honest, the world has more room for losers then winners. Only one pothead can be president. But there is infinite space on the couch.
Just a small fact to confuse your fox "news" filled mind. The rest of the world NEVER had lax gun control. Europe never was the Wild West.
Oh and gun crimes are far lower in western Europe as well. We kill each other with knifes and fists, as civilized people!
Americans have a gun fetish, it comes from their culture, their image of themselves, they ALL think they are still frontier cowboys taming the west. They are not. Aussies sipping lattes in Starbucks with a cinnamon bun STILL see themselves as sons of Crocodile Dundee even as their GPS directs them straight into a national park. It is just that the Dundee image never had a gun. Didn't need to, he is a mans man. Americans are girly man with small penises and they need to compensate with big cars and big guns.
For self defense, you want the smallest revolver possible as it is the easiest to handle, the quickest to fire, the easiest to keep near you, doesn't jam, requires the least maintenance and at close range is still highly lethal. An automatic rifle is totally useless, it is the reason any soldier required to operate in crowded areas switches firepower for a smaller weapon.
See the school shooting, he DITCHED the assault rifle and killed with pistols. The whole fascination with the bush-master makes no sense EXCEPT to compensate for personal short-comings AND for a fantasy many Americans have of wishing the apocalypse, the zombie-hord, the civil war, to happen right now so they can stop pretending to be civilized and kill THEM! Doesn't really matter who THEM is, as long as THEM is not US.
The entire NRA is based around the idea that you need a gatling gun to defend against burglars or even would be rapist. If you think about it (the Americans among you, if it starts hurting to much, look away, the scary man is almost finished with his long hurting brain words) this makes no sense. A burglar/rapist/assault happens when you LEAST expect it. A machine gun is like the Maginot Line it only works if you are not dealing with a sneaky scoundrel. Most criminals are sneaky and will strike when you are asleep, unaware, unprepared. The rotters.
What good then is a Gatling gun in the basement? Or an assault rifle, with an over sized magazine not maintained in the last decade in a gun cabinet? What you NEED if you want to live a world with guns is a small revolver you can grasp instantly and is absolutely reliable at short range while still half asleep while you call the police.
The simple fact is that the NRA is the most stupid organization in the world, they could win the debate in a heartbeat just by showing how much safer the US is for law abiding people by linking to the thousands of cases of honest citizens successfully defending themselves against criminals with their legally owned guns...
But the NRA does NOT present these thousands of stories a year... why not? That is after all the reason for civilians to own guns, to defend themselves, so why not link to all these success stories that surely must be there?
oh wait... there aren't. The stories simply don't exist. The entire idea that gun owners can defend themselves just isn't true, it doesn't happen. What does happen is that people get burgled precisly FOR their guns, that innocents get killed while cleaning/playing with guns and when the gun owners inevitably looses their mind, they go on a rampage.
If civilian gun ownership made sense, the US would be the safest place in the world to life in. Is it?